For Sales People Moving From ACT To Salesforce.Com

Here is a quick tip for users of SalesForce.com or those thinking of migrating from their ACT contact management system to SalesForce.com.

ACT is a wonderful contact management system and a not so wonderful account management system.

SalesForce.com, on the other had, gives you unprecedented insight into your accounts and how they interact with each other if you set it up that way.

Transferring information over from ACT to SalesForce can be a challenge, particularly if you’ve spent most of your time inputting and configuring your data for your contact management system are you are now transitioning to managing accounts for the first time.

My suggestion is for all of you salespeople out there to sit down with your IT person, database person, or whoever will be implementing the data transfer and to structure your accounts before they begin the actual transfer.

Give your technical person insight into how you want the accounts structured and how your accounts are related. Give them as much information as possible regarding naming convention, relationships, how you sell to your clients and how you want to tackle your accounts.

When it gets populated, you will be in a better position to marketing into your accounts, understand where your greatest opportunities lie, and create solutions that make sense for your entire account instead of one individual contact or one subsidiary.

You’ll also be in a better position to request help when managing your account, determine who is on your team and what actions that they need to take to penetrate a previously isolated subsidiary.

If you already have ACT data transferred into SalesForce.com, it will take a little more work but it’s still doable and definitely worth it.

So polish up those human relations skills, show your IT person some love and get ready to grow those accounts.